Compass Organization

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Good morning UB BSED - SOCIAL STUDIES Students! Good morning COMPASS Organization! Please be informed that we will have our first organization meeting today, June 14, 9 am at A303. Agenda will be about the organization's calendar of activities for the upcoming academic year and other important matters. There will be fines for those OLD STUDENTS who will not attend, (except for the incoming interns and new students/freshmen). Please disseminate this message. Thank you.

-Jigs Señagan, COMPASS President

Team Building

Check your facts: Maute Group is not ISIS.

Maute Group, also known as Islamic State of Lanao, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This doesn’t mean that they’re part of the latter.

They are sympathizers, not members.

READ: Copy of Proclamation 216, declaring a state of martial law and suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in Mindanao.

For more accurate scale, here's the city of Marawi and entire Mindanao under Martial Law. No shade. No tea.

Can You Recognize These Pinoy Historical Events?

Why is Filipino spelled with an F when Philippines is a PH?

In 2015, Steve Harvey became entangled in a double whammy: Apart from announcing the wrong winner in the year's Miss Universe pageant, he also mistakenly addressed our delegate as "Miss Philippians" pushing him further to the center of internet ridicule:

But for anyone who worked in a call center and took calls from irate Americans, this is anything but unusual. In reality, some people all over the world who are clueless about geography assume Philippines is the land of Philippians.

After all, Italy and Malaysian are people from Malaysia. So why can't they call us Philippians or Philippinos? The answer lies in our history, and it's a tad complex than thought.

Filipinas to Philippines
The Philippines as we know it was nonexistent in pre-colonial era. Our ancestor had no sense of nationhood yet. Instead, they were divided by different chiefdoms, each of which had its own leaders and laws.

Everything change when Spanish colonizer arrived. Ferdinand Magellan was the first one to lay to claim the islands, which he referred to as "San Larazo," before dying at the hands of Lapu-Lapu 's fierce warriors. Many years later, Miguel Lopez Legazpi finally succeed in putting the islands under the spanish crown, christening Las Islas Filipinas after their King Felipe II.

Since Philip is the english counterpart of Felipe, several names for the country appeared in various sources form 16th to 17th centuries. Among these are Philippians, Philippinas, and Philiphinas.

When control over the colony shifted from Spain, to the US in late 19th century our country was officially called the Philippine Islands. Sometime during post-war era, we finally got rid the "islands, which then gave birth to the Philippines a name that remain unchanged.

Filipino to Pilipino
For centuries, Filipino was the term used to call those who live in the Filipinas during the Spanish colonial period. Ironically, it was first used to refer ONLY to the insulares, or Spaniards born in Filipinas.

As you may recall, our society back then had an unfair hierarchy, with peninsulares or "pure" Spaniards at the top and the indios including the indigenous group languishing at the bottom.

When Americans took over, they couldn't come up with a name to call the inhabitants of their colony, now called Philippine Islands. For some reason, they found "Philippian" or "Philippinian" unsuitable , so they ended up adopting the Spanish era term Filipino.

In 1930, as our independence from the U.S. was fast approaching, the Institute of National Language was established to determine a national language that would unite us as one. Not, surprisingly, the group chose Tagalog, over two other choices, Cebuano and Ilokano.

As expected, the decision was soon followed by protracted debates. To solve the problem, the department of education in the 1950's renamed the national language "Pilipino" which they believed captures the diversity of the Philippine language more accurately. Hence, we became the "Pilipino" speaking "Pilipino" language .

But why choose Pilipino?

The proponents dug deeper into our history, going as far back as pre-colonial period when our ancestor used a native script called baybayin. composed of 17 symbols or letters that obviously don't include "F" or anything that sounds like it. For this reason, they decided that "Pilipino" was a better choice than a "Filipino" a term that constantly reminds us for our long, painful colonial history.

Soon, the Pilipino alphabet, otherwise known as the "abakada" was born. Foreign words containing letter don't exist in the native baybayin had also undergone changes: F's became P's, C's became K's and so forth.

Pilipino to Filipino

Change is constant in this world, and it took a few decades before the policy makers realized this. The 1973 constitution paved the way for adoption of "Filipino" as the national language. In constrast with its predecessor, this language would now include foreign sounding letters as "F" as well loanwords.

The change was formally applied through the 1987 Constitution. From the "abakada" alphabet, we know have the enriched version which includes "foreign" letter (not part of the baybayin) like x,z,c, f, v and j among others. Once again, we became Filipinos speaking the Filipino Language.

Today both Filipino and Pilipino are accepted words to describe the language and it's speakers. The use of Philippians or Philippino meanwhile continues to reflect a person's lack of understanding about the Filipinos and the long history of struggle that have made them who they are today.

(c) Filipiknow